Possible Fix for Oil Burning - Scotty Kilmer

[dummo]

https://youtu.be/c-babZWqH34

This looks like something worth trying.
He (Scotty) talks about it cleaning up the carbon from piston rings.

ATS Chemical Oil System Cleaner
5641E85C-4C1A-46A6-ADD9-3308E2D8EA42.jpg

First place I found the stuff online at $24.00

https://www.pelicanparts.com/More_In...pn=ATS-DSI1040

My Saturn Wagon is really not burning oil but if it was I would be giving this a try.

Has anyone here tried this stuff?

[cujoe_da_man]

I'm always very, very leery of adding anything to the oil, but oil.

Anything that claims to clean your engine might cause oil to become too thin and not stick to parts correctly. Additives that claim to plug blown seals/stop oil leaks can also plug things inside the engine as well.

I'm not saying these things don't work and I'm sure others have used them with no problem, but I've not had luck with adding anything to my oil that isn't oil without some catastrophic failure, even while following the directions to a "T".

Kinda like how they don't recommend adding Stop Leak to your coolant because sure, it'll stop that leak, but it may also stop up the veins in the water pump or the engine and cause even more issues. Again, maybe it won't, but I won't take that chance on a higher repair bill.

I suppose with what you show it might be OK since you're dumping the oil and changing anyway and it sounds like using tranny fluid to help flush out gunk and deposits that turn to sludge (tranny fluid being a lighter oil and also has lots of detergents in it), but I'd still be cautious.

Also, Scotty can be a bit... blunt. There are times he flies right in the face of something tried and true and will totally shoot it down, even though said thing has been proven to work time and time again. Not saying he's wrong, but it's best to research more than one video to see what others have to say as well.

[sc2 saturn]

sea foam dose the exact same thing half the cost, main thing which saturns is they dont have any oil drain's ports in pistons"engineering stupid mistake"

[toggenburg]

cujoe_da_man, perhaps you did not know all Chevy cars come right from the factory with coolant stop leak already in the system. IIRC, it's basically ginger root powder or something like that.
It's still available from Barr's leak as a thumb-sized pellet.

[alordofchaos]

Has anyone here tried this stuff?

Is that code for, "who wants to be a guinea pig?"
I would, if I weren't working from home. My Saturn isn't even insured/plated these days.

MSDS, pretty uninformative: https://www.atschemicals.com/_files/...d165ececd0.pdf

all the ingredients are hidden as "trade secrets", Section 3.
Only thing I could find at all was under Sec 14 under transport, where they list dipentene, a dispersing agent for oils, resins, paints, lacquers, varnishes, and in floor waxes and furniture polishes

sea foam dose the exact same thing half the cost, main thing which saturns is they dont have any oil drain's ports in pistons"engineering stupid mistake"

Didn't someone here investigate and found that Seafoam is basically naphtha and light oil?
IIRC, the oil drain thing was intentional cost-cutting decision.

When the engines were designed in the late 80s (not many years after the oil embargo/shortages), the mainstream thinking of policy-makers was that the feds were basically going to ban group-III engine oils and require group IV synthetic oils in all new cars. Group IV synthetics would not have had the burning/coking effects that group III oils did in the rings.

But the "man in the street" (e.g., normal folks) screamed about the high cost of group IV oils (even though most folks would only need to change the oil once a year), and Mobil lost their lawsuit against Castrol's use of the word "synthetic" for a group III oil, so we drive cars with engines designed for Group IV "true" PAO/diester-based synthetic oils but using Group III "synthetic as a marketing term" oil

all Chevy cars come right from the factory with coolant stop leak already in the system

Saturn S-series, too. peer OldNuc (RIP). Bar's Golden Seal. I haven't purchased any in many years, was a blister packet of discs (1/8"~ or so) back then.

[Waiex191]

There is some idiotic stuff in that video. Hammer pistons in? His dirty oil looked like every oil change I've ever done. How can he say it was full of carbon?

Quick fixes are no fix.

[toggenburg]

sc2 saturn, however; this stuff goes into the oil whereas, seafoam is gas tank, unless you have used it in the crankcase too?

[Moheganson]

The only real solution to stop your Saturn from burning oil is to have the head redone and install new pistons and rings. My 1994 SL2 with over 200K was burning a quart of oil every 300 miles. Last year, I had the head redone ($800.00), all the guides on the exhaust valves were shot and one valve was just starting to burn. Factory pistons don't have holes or slots in back of the oil wiping rings so they plug up with oil sludge and the oil wiping rings wind up getting stuck. New set of pistons and rings were ($150.00). Timing gear and chain set is around ($120.00). Now only burns a quart of oil every ten thousand miles. Lots of work though..

If you have the time, the tools and a place to work on it (heated garage), I'd highly recommend it if your oil consumption is like mine was.

[Macgyver]

Having pulled pistons out of the S Series and seen how hard the carbon can get, I doubt any cleaner would ever work without disassembly. I’ve let pistons sit in Chem dip (a crazy powerful solvent) for DAYS and the carbon still had to be scraped out of the piston groves with a chisel. Without concentrated solvent (which you can’t add to a crank case) the carbon would be so hard, you’d never be able to remove it at all.

[Waiex191]

Originally Posted by Macgyver

Having pulled pistons out of the S Series and seen how hard the carbon can get, I doubt any cleaner would ever work without disassembly. I’ve let pistons sit in Chem dip (a crazy powerful solvent) for DAYS and the carbon still had to be scraped out of the piston groves with a chisel. Without concentrated solvent (which you can’t add to a crank case) the carbon would be so hard, you’d never be able to remove it at all.

Amen!

[sc2 saturn]

Originally Posted by toggenburg

sc2 saturn, however; this stuff goes into the oil whereas, seafoam is gas tank, unless you have used it in the crankcase too?

ive used it in both its used for both gas tank and oil it says it right on can but also read it drys out seals and etc too idk if its true tho

[cris_thomas]

Originally Posted by toggenburg

sc2 saturn, however; this stuff goes into the oil whereas, seafoam is gas tank, unless you have used it in the crankcase too?

Yup, drop a tablespoon or so of SeaFoam right down the spark plug holes. Let it sit for a while. Use a flashlight to see which pistons it's drained from and add another teaspoon to those. Let it sit some more. Use one of those long claw thingy's, rip off pieces of paper towel and sop up whatever is still on top of the pistons as well as scrape off any carbon you can. Put the plugs back in and start it up. (warning there will be a LOT of smoke) run until the smoke is mostly gone and the car is fairly warm. Let it cool, drain the oil, replace the filter and the spark plugs. Do that every 20K or so.

[toggenburg]

Here are 2 articles the ATS people sent to me.

ATS Carbon Cleaning:
https://www.atscarbonclean.com/2021/...nge-intervals/


505CRO Oil System Cleaner Pour-In:
https://www.atscarbonclean.com/2021/...in-treatments/

My interest is not directly related to my family Saturns, but to my Avalanche which altho I change oil every 2K miles, I am the 3rd owner and the earlier owners did NOT change oil probably only when they thought of it.
So, my interest is to clean out any carbon/crud without clogging up the GM AFM screen directly below the oil pressure switch.

Snake oil is only of value to the snake, but if this stuff works, well then.. .. ..

[cujoe_da_man]

Originally Posted by toggenburg

cujoe_da_man, perhaps you did not know all Chevy cars come right from the factory with coolant stop leak already in the system. IIRC, it's basically ginger root powder or something like that.
It's still available from Barr's leak as a thumb-sized pellet.

I actually was not aware of such a thing, but I'm thinking of the big bottles of stuff that comes out like some kid's science experiment and you dump the whole bottle in, it has like copper and silver and all sorts of things that can gum up a coolant system.

[Signmaster]

I think for the most part it depends on the solvent used, and how stuck the ring package already was. I used a similar "dump it in and run it" product from Amsoil years ago in an old truck. At the time it didn't really burn oil, but the crud it took out was fairly amazing. I sold the truck with about 150K on it and it still didn't burn oil.

On my SL1 I decreased oil burning by close to half with doing a multiple times soak with one of the Chemtool carbon cleaners from Berrymans. I then followed up with Marvel Mystery Oil to suspend the carbon and help suction it out.

Others have used the Chemtool and other solvents and had good results. Some went from a quart per 400 miles to less than a quart per 1000 miles. My improvements weren't that great, but my consumption was never that bad either. In any case, it helped, even though quite a few users state it would cause issues. There was a lot of fearmongering and hand waving when one user used Chem Dip solution, but he had no issues and his oil consumption went down quite a bit.


If you only believe certain things you read on forums from certain people, you would probably miss out on quite a lot. I used a lot of "other than most recommended" parts when I had my Saturn, and it ran great, got great gas mileage, and didn't have some of the issues caused to many by those "most recommended" parts.